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April 20, 2012

n the southern
part of India where I come from, there’s this age old tradition/ custom of
never going visiting family or friends empty-handed, even casual visitors would
many a times keep with this tradition. This tradition exists in the rest of
India and in many other parts of the world too. It is somewhat like taking
wine, chocolate, flowers or a small gift for your hosts when you’re invited to
dinner.

So we grew up
being taught to always carry something (usually a gift of food) for our hosts
when we went visiting. I do hesitate to call these “gifts”, because they really
were more of an “I wanted to show my affection/ respect so I brought along
something you would like” sort of offering. And if there were elders or
children in the home you were visiting, you never went empty-handed because even
though there was no compulsion to carry something with you, it was generally
considered bad manners or a lack of social courtesies. One rarely carried expensive
gifts and you could never go wrong with taking fruit along with you, and
perhaps a few packets of biscuits (what we call our cookies in India) for the
children of the house.

I remember as
children, we were always more excited to see what the guests to our home brought
with them, than the guests themselves except in the rare exception that we were
expecting a favourite uncle, aunt or grandparent. And they would invariably
bring us what we liked or wanted. Those were the days when people almost always
brought along fruit since most people grew things like bananas, plantains,
mangoes, jackfruit, guavas and stuff in their backyards.Apples, pears and other fruit that we take
for granted today, were grown in other parts of the country and we saw them
only in the pages of our nursery books.

We weren’t much
enamoured by fruit and looked forward to the “real” treats like biscuits/
cookies, sweetmeats or small bars of chocolates instead. Remember that these
were times when processed and packaged foods were quite expensive and also
looked down upon by our elders who couldn’t understand why one would spend a
lot more money buying stuff wrapped in plastic/ foil when you could eat much
better food made at home!

This tradition
is something a lot of us in India still continue with, except these days I tend
to take along home-baked goodies when visiting. Recently a friend of ours, whom
we hadn’t seen in over a year, was in our neighbourhood and decided to drop by
and brought along a huge bag of apples. Now it so happened that just 2 days
before this I had been to the market for my weekly haul of vegetables and fruit
which also included a kilo of apples!

So here I was,
with a whole lot of apples on my hand (in my fruit basket actually!)
threatening to go bad on me. So what do you do when life gives you loads of
apples, especially when it’s not a favourite fruit in your home? I used my own
recipes and suggestions from some friends and turned them into milkshakes,
Tarte Tatin, Apple Pie, Apple Chutney, Apple Raita (apple in spiced yogurt),
Apple Cake, Apple Fritters, Apple Coffee Cake, Apple Pancakes, hid them in salads and even fed
them to our dog! It came to a point where my husband and daughter started
saying, “Please don’t say there’s apple in this too!”

And still I had
more apples left. That’s when someone on Facebook suggested I try making pasta sauce with apples. I wasn’t sure that this was a good idea but the thought of
apples in pasta sauce had me intrigued. A search on the net led me to this
recipe and other very positive reactions from various people who had tried it.
Since it wasn’t very difficult to make, I thought I would risk it. And I had an
idea that if the pasta sauce wasn’t well received at lunch, I could always
convert into some sort of soup so no waste either!

I made some
small changes to the original recipe and we were very pleasantly surprised at
how good the sauce tasted. It is much
like the basic tomato sauce for pasta but the apple adds a hint of sweet that
balances the tartness of the tomatoes, much like when some people add a bit of
sugar to their tomato sauce.Hence it is
important to use the slightly tart variety rather than sweet apples or your
sauce could end up sweet. The apple also adds body and texture to the tomato
sauce, but no one would ever say there was apple in it.

My recipe below
is an adaptation of the one in Lidia Bastianich’s book, Lidia Cooks From TheHeart Of Italy. This particular pasta sauce is from Italy’s Trentino–Alto Adige
region, where they use apples in a lot of their cooking which isn’t surprising
since this region is a leading producer of apples.

Put the cooked tomatoes
and the bell pepper in a blender and purée. Keep this aside. Your tomato purée
can be very smooth or a bit chunky. I prefer mine a little bit chunky, because
I feel it adds a rustic feel and gives the sauce some character, visually at
least.

If you would like to keep your sauce chunky then purée the tomatoes and
the bell pepper separately because chunks of bell pepper doesn’t taste good in
this sauce! So put about half a cup of the tomato purée and the chopped bell
pepper in the blender and purée till smooth. Empty into the rest of the tomato
and keep aside.

Heat the oil in
a largish pan, and sauté the onions on medium heat, till they turn soft. Add
the garlic paste and cook for another minute. Add your blended tomato-bell
pepper mixture and the chilli powder. Season with salt to your taste.

Bring the whole
thing to a boil and then turn down the heat so that sauce continues to bubble
and simmer. Stir occasionally and let this cook for about 10 minutes. In the
meanwhile, peel and core the apples and then grate them.

Add the grated
apple to the sauce, and allow it to cook for another 15 minutes till the apple
is cooked and the sauce thickens to desired consistency.

While the sauce
is cooking, cook the pasta in salted water till al dente. Drain the pasta and
put it in the simmering tomato-apple sauce. Toss the pasta till well coated
with the sauce. Sprinkle some grated cheese and toss again to mix. Serve hot,
with extra cheese on the table if necessary.

This recipe
serves 3, so you can double the recipe if needed for a larger group of people.